Supreme Court of the United States

Transcription

1 No IN THE Supreme Court of the United States NORTHWEST AUSTIN MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT NUMBER ONE, v. ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL., Appellant, Appellees. On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia BRIEF OF DR. ABIGAIL THERNSTROM AND FORMER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT MICHAEL A. CARVIN Counsel of Record RYAN D. NEWMAN DAVID J. STRANDNESS TARA M. STUCKEY JONES DAY 51 Louisiana Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C (202) February 26, 2009 Counsel for Amici Curiae

2 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF AUTHORITIES... ii STATEMENT OF INTEREST... 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT... 2 ARGUMENT... 4 I. THE COURT HAS PREVIOUSLY INTERPRETED 5 SO AS TO AVOID SERIOUS CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS... 4 A. Boerne And Katzenbach Do Not Apply To Laws Authorizing Racial Classifications... 4 B. The Purposeful Creation Of Majority- Minority And Electable Minority Districts Requires Inherently Suspect Racial Classifications... 9 C. Limiting 5 To The Retrogression Context Reduces Race-Conscious Redistricting D. Ashcroft Interpreted 5 s Retrogression Prohibition In A Way That Reduced Race-Conscious Redistricting II. AS AMENDED, 5 RESURRECTS THE SERIOUS CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS THAT THIS COURT SOUGHT REPEATEDLY TO AVOID CONCLUSION... 38

3 ii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES CASES Page Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995)... 6, 8, 9, 12 Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 (1976) Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001) Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996)... 17, 20 Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380 (1991) City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997)... 5, 34, 36 City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989)... 7, 9 Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234 (2001) Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206 (1960) Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003)...passim Hays v. Louisiana, 862 F. Supp. 119 (W.D. La. 1994) Holder v. Hall, 512 U.S. 874 (1994) Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997 (1994)... 13, 29 Johnson v. Miller, 929 F. Supp (S.D. Ga. 1996) Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966)...passim League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399 (2006)...passim Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990)... 9

4 iii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES (continued) Page Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995)...passim Morris v. Gressette, 432 U.S. 491 (1977) Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003) Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970)... 5, 6 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 127 S. Ct (2007) Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979) Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board, 520 U.S. 471 (1997) Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board, 528 U.S. 320 (2000)... 3, 15, 17 Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996)... 19, 20 Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993)... 2, 5, 20 South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966)... 2, 4, 5 Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737 (1995) Vera v. Richards, 861 F. Supp (S.D. Tex. 1994) Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977) Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146 (1993)... 16

5 iv TABLE OF AUTHORITIES (continued) Page Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267 (1986) CONSTITUTIONS, STATUTES AND LEGISLATIVE HISTORY U.S. Const. amend. XIV...passim U.S. Const. amend. XV...passim Voting Rights Act Section 2, 42 U.S.C passim Section 5, 42 U.S.C. 1973c...passim Section 5, 42 U.S.C. 1973c (2005) H.R. Rep. No (2006)... 25, 27, 30, 33 S. Rep. No (1982), as reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N S. Rep. No (2006)... 4, 32 OTHER AUTHORITIES Franita Tolson, Increasing the Quantity and the Quality of the African-American Vote: Lessons for 2008 and Beyond, 10 Berkeley J. Afr.-Am. L. & Pol y 313 (2008)... 28

6 1 STATEMENT OF INTEREST 1 Dr. Abigail Thernstrom and former Justice Department officials submit this brief amici curiae in support of Appellant. Dr. Abigail Thernstrom is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She is presenting her personal opinion as an election law expert and not the Commission s views. Former Justice Department officials include Joel Ard, Karl S. Bowers, Jr., Robert N. Driscoll, William Bradford Reynolds, and Hans A. von Spakovsky. All have served in the Department s Civil Rights Division and have extensive experience with the Voting Rights Act and the Department s enforcement policies. The amici curiae have a substantial interest in eliminating the use of race as a factor in redistricting. 1 Counsel for all parties have consented to the filing of this brief, and those consents are on file with the Clerk s Office or filed contemporaneously with this brief. No counsel for a party in this case authored this brief in whole or in part, and no person or entity, other than amici and their counsel, has made a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission of this brief.

7 2 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT When Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, it did not merely extend the life of 5 for twenty-five years; it substantially altered the substantive requirements of that provision in a way that deliberately increases the pressure on covered jurisdictions to engage in race-based redistricting. Because the amended 5 now contains an implicit command that States engage in presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting, Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 927 (1995), it cannot properly be regarded as appropriate legislation to enforce the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments under South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966), or Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966). The fundamental mistake of the court below was to assess a statute that plainly encourages States to use race in a way that at least potentially violates the Fourteenth Amendment right recognized in Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993), under the analysis employed in Katzenbach and Morgan for federal prohibitions against racially-tinged voting requirements. Moreover, increasing the substantive burdens on covered jurisdictions beyond those imposed on the South in the 1960s cannot rationally be viewed as a congruent and proportional effort to prevent discrimination. Prior to the 2006 reauthorization, the Court took great care to interpret 5 in a way that would avoid the constitutional difficulties now created by Congress. In the face of persistent efforts by the Justice Department to find discriminatory purpose whenever a covered jurisdiction failed to create

8 3 additional race-based districts, even at the expense of traditional districting principles, the Court made clear that 5 applied only to the limited question of retrogressive purpose. Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd. (Bossier II), 528 U.S. 320, 329 (2000). Even though the Department s misinterpretation of 5 s discriminatory purpose prong directly resulted in the racially-gerrymandered districts violative of Shaw, and even though the Court strongly warned that the Department s assessment of when majorityminority districts were required raised serious constitutional concerns, Miller, 515 U.S. at 926, Congress in 2006 reauthorized the Department to require such districts under the purpose prong, thus ensuring that in the next redistricting cycle covered jurisdictions would again confront the conflicting demands of the Department and Shaw, in the manner that bedeviled redistricting in the 1990s. Worse still, Congress significantly altered 5 s substantive standard to prohibit any action with the effect of diminishing the ability of [a minority group]... to elect their preferred candidates of choice, 42 U.S.C. 1973c(b) (emphasis added), for the next three redistricting cycles, regardless of whether that diminution was necessitated by demographic changes or traditional districting principles. Congress created this guaranteed level of electoral success and representation for certain minority groups over the next three decades in order to overturn this Court s decision in Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003). Congress emphatically rejected Ashcroft s conclusion that, forty years after 5 was enacted, some covered jurisdictions should be permitted to break up

9 4 districts where minorities form a clear majority of voters and replace them with vague concepts such as... coalition [districts]. S. Rep. No , at (2006) (emphasis added). Accordingly, Congress preserved in amber until 2031 all extant majorityminority districts (or other electable minority districts), regardless of changes in voting patterns or demographics, thus ensuring that these segregative and constitutionally problematic districts were not simply temporary transformative measures, but will be a permanent part of the electoral landscape until at least 66 years after 5 was enacted. Needless to say, this extraordinary mandate to use race in voting requires a far more searching judicial inquiry than asking (as the district court did) whether it was rational for Congress to believe that some vestiges of voting discrimination persisted in In all events, the fact that 5 now undermines the nondiscrimination guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments clearly means that it is not congruent and proportional to enforcing those amendments. ARGUMENT I. THE COURT HAS PREVIOUSLY INTER- PRETED 5 SO AS TO AVOID SERIOUS CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS A. Boerne And Katzenbach Do Not Apply To Laws Authorizing Racial Classifications The court below found that 5 of the Voting Rights Act is a constitutional exercise of Congress s power under the enforcement clauses of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pursuant to the analysis employed in Katzenbach, 383 U.S. at 301, and

10 5 Morgan, 384 U.S. at 641, and, alternatively, under this Court s decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). This conclusion is wrong for all the reasons set forth by Appellant, but it is also plainly erroneous for a more fundamental reason. Namely, with respect to redistricting and similar vote-dilution claims, 5 is not a nondiscriminatory measure that prophylactically eliminates racial barriers to voting, like the laws at issue in Morgan and Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970), but, as substantially amended in 2006, is an affirmative requirement for States to create racial classifications of the sort that presumptively violate the Fourteenth Amendment under Shaw, 509 U.S. at That being so, the 2006 version of 5 is not properly regarded as appropriate legislation to enforce the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. As the Court explained in Miller, 515 U.S. at 927, if 5 contains an implicit command that States engage in presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting, this brings the Act, once upheld as a proper exercise of Congress authority under 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, Katzenbach, [383 U.S.] at 327, 337, into tension with the Fourteenth Amendment. Consequently, Katzenbach s analysis would not support any such race-conscious version of 5 because, as the Court recalled in Katzenbach itself, Congress exercise of its Fifteenth Amendment authority... must consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution. Id. (quoting Katzenbach, 383 U.S. at 326). Thus, a law that authorizes the creation of racial classifications is not assessed under the standards

11 6 established in Katzenbach or Boerne or, stated another way, is not deemed an appropriate exercise of Congress s enforcement power under the Reconstruction Amendments simply because it satisfies the tests set forth in those cases. Rather, racial classifications by States are permissible only if they are narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest, whether those classifications are enacted by States voluntarily or imposed on them by Congress. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 235 (1995). Indeed, from the outset, the Court has recognized that laws that threaten the race-neutral guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause and the Fifteenth Amendment are not a proper exercise of Congress s enforcement power and are not adjudged by the same standards applied to statutes eliminating State practices that disproportionately burden certain racial groups. Thus, in Morgan, the Court reiterated that legislation is appropriate under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment only if it is consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, 384 U.S. at 651 (quoting McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 421 (1819)), and emphasized that the section grants no power to restrict, abrogate, or dilute [the] guarantees of that Amendment, id. at 651 n.10. It follows that Congress has no power under the enforcement sections to undercut the Amendments guarantees of personal equality and freedom from discrimination. Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 128 (opinion of Black, J.). Thus, federal statutes that eliminate barriers to equal minority access, such as prohibitions against

12 7 bonding requirements in contracting that disproportionately burden minorities, cf. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 510 (1989), or a prohibition on literacy tests in voting, see Morgan, 384 U.S. at 658, are judged by a different, more lenient standard than laws that require States to establish contracting set-asides or that require race-based line drawing. The reasons for this differential treatment are self-evident. Laws that impose burdens on States or infringe their autonomy, like the procedural aspects of 5 analyzed in Katzenbach, or that eliminate barriers to the ballot, such as the ban on the literacy test in Morgan, do not disadvantage or racially classify any citizen. Indeed, if anything, eliminating voting barriers benefits nonminorities by broadening the franchise. Thus, in situations where federal legislation overrides qualifications for voting because of their disparate racial impact, the only relevant constitutional interest is the State s interest in resisting congressional encroachment of its authority to establish voting qualifications. Since the validity of that encroachment turns on whether the federal statute prevents or remedies constitutional violations, that is the sum total of the inquiry. In contrast, where federal statutes require or authorize States to establish racial classifications such as contracting goals or race-based redistricting schemes the relevant constitutional interest is the citizen s right to race-neutral treatment under the Equal Protection Clause, not just State autonomy. Consequently, the question is whether that personal right has been infringed, and that question turns on

13 8 whether the federal government has proved that the use of race is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. Adarand, 515 U.S. at 235. And, since all governmental action based on race is a group classification long recognized as in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited, all such action must be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to equal protection of the laws has not been infringed. Id. at 227 (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, when Congress uses such an inherently suspect classification, Miller, 515 U.S. at 904 (internal quotation marks omitted), it is subject to far more vigorous judicial scrutiny than that applied to determine whether Congress has exceeded a delegated power whether under the Necessary and Proper Clause or the enforcement clauses. Simply put, federal laws encouraging or requiring States to use racial classifications are subject to far more judicial skepticism and detailed scrutiny than federal laws prohibiting States from using devices with a racial impact or purpose. Moreover, a federal law that presumptively violates the substantive commands of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments plainly cannot be legislation that enforces, or is appropriate under, those Amendments, unless the government can rebut the presumption by satisfying the daunting requirements of strict scrutiny. Indeed, the Court has made clear that racial classifications imposed on States by Congress pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment are just as suspect as voluntarily adopted State classifications, precisely

14 9 because it makes no sense to conclude that a law that is an equal protection violation when enacted by a State can somehow become[] transformed to an equal protection guarantee when enacted by Congress. Croson, 488 U.S. at 518 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). For this reason, the Court in Adarand took the extraordinary step of overruling Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990), in order to restore the long-held notion that all racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor, must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny. Adarand, 515 U.S. at 225, 227. But even if the Boerne framework is used, 5 is not congruent and proportional, because it now undermines the nondiscrimination mandates of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by encouraging segregated voting districts. B. The Purposeful Creation Of Majority- Minority And Electable Minority Districts Requires Inherently Suspect Racial Classifications In short, it is plainly improper to assess the validity of a federal law requiring a racial classification pursuant to the same standards used in Morgan or Boerne to analyze laws that lifted burdens on racial or religious groups. It seems quite obvious that a federal statute expressly mandating that States create majority-minority districts even if this requires subordination of traditional districting principles must be given far more searching analysis than a law that prohibits literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. Yet the district court

15 10 proceeded as if Morgan s endorsement of congressional power to eliminate barriers to voting through race-neutral means somehow resolves the separate question of whether Congress may require race-based redistricting under 5, even though, as detailed below, this Court has consistently warned that the Justice Department s interpretation of 5 raises serious constitutional questions under the Fourteenth Amendment and even though Congress altered 5 in 2006 to embrace the Department s expansive, race-conscious interpretation. In fairness, there is potential for conceptual confusion in this regard, because the discriminatory effect prong of 5, when applied outside the redistricting or vote-dilution context, is simply a prophylactic prohibition against devices that exclude access to the ballot, and does not coerce racial favoritism or proportionality. Applying the effect prong to remove candidate filing fees or burdensome voting qualifications does not racially classify or disadvantage anyone, but simply eliminates headwinds that deny, albeit unintentionally, equal access. While the burden is eliminated because of its disparate impact on a minority group, the remedy does not impose any burden on nonminority voters indeed, it advantages those nonminorities who were burdened by the requirement. In contrast, when the effect analysis concerns the degree of a minority group s representation in the legislature i.e., whether overall minority voting strength has been diluted then there is a clear potential for the discriminatory effect prohibition to require race-based line drawing and group

16 11 favoritism, rather than equal opportunity. A straightforward and inviolable prohibition against procedures that result in a disparate effect in a certain body whether it is a workforce or school or legislature is, of course, simply a requirement for proportional representation. In a community with 30% minority representation, a prohibition against making selection decisions with a disproportionate effect is simply a requirement that the workforce or school select 30% of the racial group and is thus indistinguishable from numerical goals that the Court has invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause. See Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738, 2746 (2007); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 270, 284 (1986). In short, representation in a legislature, like that in a workforce or school, is a zero-sum game where a prohibition against representation falling below a certain percentage is a quota floor for the favored group and a quota ceiling for others. Looked at another way, if the remedy for correcting the effect is to eliminate the barrier causing the effect, then government is not using race to classify or separate citizens. If the remedy is to use race to correct the effect, then government is utilizing this inherently suspect device. In redistricting, the remedy for failing to create majority-minority or electable minority districts is to create such raceconscious districts, just as school segregation is sometimes corrected (or avoided) through raceconscious school attendance lines and disproportionate representation in employment is corrected (or avoided) through goals.

17 12 Section 5 s principal and most important application is to redistricting plans, and the statute as amended prevents and remedies dilutive plans by mandating majority-minority or electable districts of the sort that have the potential to violate Shaw. This race-conscious mandate obviously cannot be judged by the same standards as race-neutral prohibitions of voting barriers, any more than a congressional statute mandating integrative goals of the sort invalidated in Parents Involved would be adjudged as if it merely foreclosed segregation. As Morgan itself noted, an enactment authorizing the States to establish racially segregated systems of education would not be as required by 5 a measure to enforce the Equal Protection Clause since that clause of its own force prohibits such state laws. 384 U.S. at 651 n.10. Because the Court has clarified repeatedly that the Equal Protection Clause also at least presumptively prohibits racial-balancing laws to integrate schools and redistricting plans that segregate voters to benefit minorities, Morgan s exclusion of federal laws authorizing segregative, race-conscious line drawing from the ambit of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment applies equally to these benign discrimination laws. After all, the whole point of strict scrutiny is to ensure that inherently suspect racial classifications truly do serve permissible ends in the most limited way which cannot be determined if such measures are merely subject to the limited, deferential Morgan inquiry. See Adarand, 515 U.S. at 236 ( [R]equiring strict scrutiny is the best way to ensure that courts will consistently give racial classifica-

18 13 tions... detailed examination, both as to ends and as to means. ). C. Limiting 5 To The Retrogression Context Reduces Race-Conscious Redistricting Cognizant of the danger that an effects test may mandate impermissible racial preferences or segregation, the Court has been careful to interpret the results and effect requirements of, respectively, 2 and 5 in a manner that attempts to avoid any such mandate. With respect to 2, the Court has consistently made clear that the only right under that statute is equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race. League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Perry (LULAC), 548 U.S. 399, 428 (2006) (plurality) (quoting Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1014 n.11 (1994)). Thus, while 2 will frequently command the elimination of notoriously dilutive devices such as at-large systems, it plainly does not require proportional representation, 42 U.S.C. 1973(b); see also De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1014 n.11; Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, (1986) (O Connor, J., concurring), or maximization, De Grandy, 512 U.S. at , or the creation of minority districts if they are not compact, Gingles, 478 U.S. at 49-50, or if they depart from other traditional districting principles such as maintaining communities of interest and traditional boundaries, LULAC, 548 U.S. at 433 (quoting Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U.S. 74, 92 (1997)); see also Miller, 515 U.S. at 919, and otherwise requires a factbound focus on the totality of circumstances,

19 14 including the tenuous[ness] or strength of the policy underlying the... practice, S. Rep. No , at 29, 67 (1982), as reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 177, 207, 246. In short, properly interpreted, 2 ensures only equal treatment of minority voters by requiring minority districts (if the totality of circumstances so dictates) only where it is fair to presume that other groups would be provided a district in analogous circumstances i.e., when they constitute a majority of a district that is compact and consistent with traditional districting principles. See Miller, 515 U.S. at 920 ( [W]hen members of a racial group live together in one community, a reapportionment plan that concentrates members of the group in one district and excludes them from others may reflect wholly legitimate purposes. (quoting Shaw, 509 U.S. at 646)). Conversely, since such naturally forming districts suggest only equal, rather than preferential, treatment, a legislature s compliance with traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions may well suffice to refute a claim of racial gerrymandering. Id. at 919 (quoting Shaw, 509 U.S. at 647). Similarly, and more to the point here, this Court has consistently interpreted 5 to avoid the serious constitutional concerns, Miller, 515 U.S. at 926, directly raised by the Justice Department s persistent efforts to expand the statute into an open-ended vehicle for it to mandate race-based redistricting. First, the Court has consistently interpreted 5 to focus only on the limited and manageable question

20 15 of whether the redistricting plan is retrogressive. Bossier II, 528 U.S. at 335. Thus, the relative comparison is between only two plans the old plan and the new one. That is, there is only one benchmark for measuring minority voting strength the existing plan. Holder v. Hall, 512 U.S. 874, (1994). If the inquiry had been expanded to whether the plan dilutes minority voting strength relative to proposed alternative new plans, this would both enormously complicate the submitting jurisdiction s justification burden and expand the Justice Department s power to secondguess the State s redistricting decisions under the discriminatory purpose prong. Specifically, the question of whether a jurisdiction has rejected a proposed alternative for the purpose of diluting minority voting strength first requires analysis of the proposed alternative to determine whether it better enhances minority electoral chances. It is often complex in practice to determine the right answer to this question, Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 480, because it requires, at the district level, a complicated and imprecise analysis of nonminority and minority voting patterns to estimate what minority percentage is sufficient to make the district electable for a minority-preferred candidate and then, with respect to the overall plan, to resolve issues like whether a plan with three districts where minorities have a 50% chance of winning is less dilutive than a plan with two safe minority districts. This imprecise inquiry is then followed by an even more speculative and amorphous analysis of whether the alternative was rejected because of, not

21 16 merely in spite of, its dilutive effect. Pers. Adm r of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279 (1979). While assessing the purpose of a multi-member body is difficult and imprecise in all circumstances, Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265 (1977) ( Rarely can it be said that a legislature... made a decision motivated solely by a single concern, or even that a particular purpose was the dominant or primary one. ), it is extraordinarily open-ended and amorphous in the redistricting context because partisanship and incumbency both substantially overlap with race. 2 In short, if 5 had been expanded beyond the relatively straightforward retrogression analysis, the preclearance assessment would entail a fact-bound, complicated inquiry into 2-type dilution issues and a subjective, open-ended assessment of the submitting 2 As this Court s cases and the closely divided results therein illustrate, it is quite difficult to disentangle whether a legislature s purpose is racial or political or incumbency protection. For example, it is difficult to determine whether line drawing that helps protect an incumbent by shedding hostile voters (e.g., LULAC, 548 U.S. at ) or adding friendly ones (e.g., Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, (2001)) is racial or political; whether efforts to displace an incumbent from the opposite party are racial or political (e.g., LULAC, 548 U.S. at ); whether the creation of majority-minority districts is a dilutive effort to pack (Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 481), an effort to maximize minority voting strength or an effort to advance Republican political interests in adjacent districts (Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, , (1993)); or whether diminution of minority percentages in majority-minority districts is an effort to dilute minority voting strength, to enhance it through increased descriptive representation (Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 481), or to advance Democratic political interests (id. at ).

22 17 jurisdiction s purpose. And, as the Court has noted, this expanded standard would have raised serious constitutional concerns for two reasons. First, shift[ing] the focus of 5 from nonretrogression to vote dilution, and... chang[ing] the 5 benchmark from a jurisdiction s existing plan to a hypothetical, undiluted plan [would] exacerbate the substantial federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already exacts. Bossier II, 528 U.S. at 336 (internal quotation marks omitted). The covered jurisdictions already bear the difficult burden of proving the absence of discriminatory purpose and effect. Reno v. Bossier Parish Sch. Bd. (Bossier I), 520 U.S. 471, 480 (1997); see also Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 218 (1960) ( [A]s a practical matter it is never easy to prove a negative. ). To subject these jurisdictions to the equivalent of a fullblown 2 trial plus the burden of showing that hypothetical plans were not rejected for any racial reason (particularly in a context where race often must be considered and correlates directly with politics and incumbency, see Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting)) would substantially increase the onerous burdens of preclearance, perhaps to the extent of raising concerns about 5 s constitutionality. Bossier II, 528 U.S. at 876. Second, and more important, extending 5 to outlaw a discriminatory non-retrogressive purpose, would authorize the Justice Department, 3 without 3 Although [ 5] permits a covered state to obtain preclearance, via a declaratory judgment, from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia,... given the long period of

23 18 any judicial review, see Morris v. Gressette, 432 U.S. 491, (1977), to find discriminatory purpose whenever a covered jurisdiction has failed to create a race-based district, even where the district is plainly at odds with traditional districting principles. And the 1990s redistricting cases demonstrate that the Department s conception of 5 leads to discriminatory purpose findings even though the State rejected a majority-minority district because it was inconsistent with those principles, thus requiring the race-based districts violative of Shaw. During the 1990 redistricting cycle, the Department routinely denied preclearance to redistricting plans on the ground that States had failed to prove an absence of discriminatory purpose by their failure to maximize the number of majorityminority districts. The Court has frequently noted this practice and strongly warned that the Justice Department s implicit command that States engage in presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting raised serious constitutional concerns under both Katzenbach and the Fourteenth Amendment. Miller, 515 U.S. at In Miller, even though the Georgia legislature created one more majority-minority district than the prior plan, the Department still denied preclearance (continued ) time it typically takes for such litigation, that alternative is rarely practical in the typical redistricting situation in which elections must be held within months of the enactment of the redistricting plan. Johnson v. Miller, 929 F. Supp. 1529, 1532 n.5 (S.D. Ga. 1996).

24 19 based on the State s failure to create yet another majority-minority district. Id. at , 924. Significantly, the State had shown that drawing the second new district would have violated standards of compactness, id. at 919, but the Department nevertheless found that this proffered nondiscriminatory purpose was insufficient. As this Court noted, [i]nstead of grounding its objections on evidence of a discriminatory purpose, it would appear the [Justice Department] was driven by its policy of maximizing majority-black districts. Id. at 924. The additional majority-minority district created to comply with the Department s demands, was a [g]eographic[]... monstrosity, connecting the black neighborhoods of metropolitan Atlanta and the poor black populace of coastal Chatham County, though 260 miles apart in distance and worlds apart in culture. Id. at 917. Similarly, North Carolina submitted a plan that created the State s first majority-minority district. Shaw v. Hunt (Shaw II), 517 U.S. 899, 912 (1996). In its submission, the legislature proffered the following purposes behind its plan: to keep precincts whole, to avoid dividing counties into more than two districts, and to give black voters a fair amount of influence. Id. But the Department denied preclearance on discriminatory purpose grounds, because the plan failed to give effect to black and Native American voting strength in the south-central to southeastern part of the state. Id. at 902 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 912. As in Georgia, the Justice Department was pursuing... the same policy of maximizing the number of majority-black

25 20 districts. Id. at 913. To satisfy the Department s demands, the legislature subsequently drew one majority-minority district that looked like a bug splattered on a windshield and a second district wind[ing] in snakelike fashion for 160 miles. Shaw, 509 U.S. at 635. In Louisiana, the Department denied preclearance of the legislature s redistricting plan for state school board elections, claiming the legislature was acting with discriminatory purpose by not creating a new majority-minority district. United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, (1995). To prevent the Department from also rejecting its congressional redistricting plan, the legislature submitted a plan with a new majority-minority district that was bizarre and irregular[ly] shape[d,]... cut[ting] across historical and cultural divides, split[ting] twelve of its fifteen parishes and divid[ing] four of the seven major cities of the State. Hays v. Louisiana, 862 F. Supp. 119, (W.D. La. 1994). Similarly, the Texas legislature believed that the failure to draw a new majority-minority district might be interpreted as retrogression under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Vera v. Richards, 861 F. Supp. 1304, 1315 (S.D. Tex. 1994); see also Vera, 517 U.S. at Thus, it is clear that the Department interpreted 5 to authorize a finding of discriminatory purpose for the failure to create a majority-minority district, even where neutral districting principles supported the covered jurisdiction s decision. And, by effectively requiring such subordination of districting principles, it mandated the race-based line-drawing condemned

26 21 by Shaw and its progeny. Notably, after the 2000 Bossier II decision deprived the Department of its authority to find discriminatory purpose, the 2000 redistricting cycle did not produce a single instance where a court invalidated a redistricting scheme under Shaw. Yet, as we discuss more fully below, Congress in 2006, well aware of this reality, deliberately granted the Department the power to analyze non-retrogressive discriminatory purpose, and thus revived its well-established propensity to mandate race-based districts that violate traditional principles. D. Ashcroft Interpreted 5 s Retrogression Prohibition In A Way That Reduced Race- Conscious Redistricting In addition to Bossier II, a second case, Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003), confirmed that 5 did not mandate majority-minority districts, even in the retrogression context. In Ashcroft, the Court held that the proper retrogression inquiry should not focus solely on the ability of a minority group to elect a candidate of choice. Id. at 485. Rather, the retrogression inquiry established under Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130 (1976), and its progeny whether a voting change would lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise, id. at 141 is to be assessed under a totality of circumstances analysis akin to that used in the 2 context. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 480, Just as the extent of the opportunities minority voters enjoy to participate in the political processes is an important factor to consider in assessing a 2

27 22 vote-dilution inquiry, the same standard should apply to 5. Id. at 485 (quoting De Grandy, 512 U.S. at ). Specifically, Ashcroft held that, [i]n assessing the totality of the circumstances for analyzing retrogression, id. at 480, the principal focus should be on three general factors: the ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice, the extent of the minority group s opportunity to participate in the political process, and the feasibility of creating a nonretrogressive plan. Id. at 479. By interpreting the effective exercise of the electoral franchise to encompass more than the mere ability to elect candidates and, instead, to also include a broad-based inquiry into the totality of circumstances including feasibility and the opportunity to participate in all aspects of the political process the Court obviously reduced, in a number of ways, the pressure on 5 jurisdictions to mechanically maintain majority-minority districts. First, in contrast to the United States myopic focus on the comparative ability of black voters in the majority-minority districts to elect a candidate of choice, id. at (emphasis added), courts should examine whether there has been an increase in minority voters ability to elect in coalition districts those in which minority citizens are able to form coalitions with voters from other racial and ethnic groups and thus have no need to be a majority within a single district, id. at 481 (quoting De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1020) to offset[] any decrease in black voting age population in the majority-minority districts, id. at 487. Consequently, this decision reduced the pressure under 5 to

28 23 segregate voters into majority-minority districts, which reinforce the demeaning notion that members of the defined racial groups ascribe to certain minority views that must be different from those of other citizens. Miller, 515 U.S. at 914 (citation omitted). Rather, the submitting jurisdiction has the option of creating integrated districts where minorities pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground, the virtue of which is not to be slighted in applying a statute meant to hasten the waning of racism in American politics. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 481 (quoting De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1020). Second, and more important, the Court held that the minority group s ability to influence the political process in ways wholly apart from winning elections was a highly relevant factor in the retrogression analysis, id. at 482 (internal quotation marks omitted), which ameliorated the requirement to draw electable districts in a race-conscious manner, whether those electable districts were majority-minority or coalition. Rather than having to manipulate district lines to ensure electable districts, a covered jurisdiction could avoid retrogression (in part) through integrated districts where candidates, although elected without decisive minority support, would nevertheless be willing to take the minority s interests into account. Id. (quoting Gingles, 478 U.S. at 100 (O Connor, J., concurring in the judgment)). Thus, a State could choose to have fewer minority representatives without being deemed retrogressive if it had a correlative increas[e] [in] the number of

29 24 representatives sympathetic to the interests of minority voters. Id. at 483. In addition, minorities opportunity to participate politically, and the consequent lack of retrogressive effect, could be established by showing that the districting plan maintains legislative positions of power for minority voters representatives or that these representatives support the new districting plan. Id. at 484. Third, and perhaps most important as a practical matter, Ashcroft further reduced the pressure to engage in race-based redistricting by recognizing the relevance of traditional districting principles. Specifically, by clarifying that the feasibility of nonretrogressive plans was part of the retrogression analysis, the Court ensured that submitting jurisdictions were not required to subordinate those traditional principles to preserve majority-minority districts a course of action that would trigger strict scrutiny. Miller, 515 U.S. at 920. Thus, as is often the case in a highly mobile society, if demographic changes render it less than feasible to maintain majority-minority districts that are compact and respect political boundaries, jurisdictions need not subordinate such traditional districting principles to maintain those districts. This, again, avoids interpreting 5 in a way that requires a presumptive violation of the equal protection guarantee recognized in Shaw. Thus, in the context of retrogression, the Court adopted an analysis of effective exercise of the electoral franchise that parallels the 2 inquiry. Section 2 plaintiffs must show that, based on the totality of circumstances, they have less

30 25 opportunity... to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice, 42 U.S.C. 1973(b) (emphasis added), and also show that the alternative benchmark plan that allegedly creates greater opportunities complies with traditional districting principles such as compactness and preservation of political boundaries and communities of interest. See Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 397 (1991). The Ashcroft totality of circumstances analysis, which emphasizes the ability to politically participate and the plan s feasibility, in addition to ability to elect, establishes a strikingly similar inquiry when comparing the new redistricting plan to the old one. In sum, the Court has taken great care to interpret both the effect and purpose prongs of 5 in a way that would avoid both exacerbating the federalism costs of preclearance and violating the equal protection principles of the Fourteenth Amendment. II. AS AMENDED, 5 RESURRECTS THE SERIOUS CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS THAT THIS COURT SOUGHT REPEATEDLY TO AVOID In 2006, Congress not only extended 5 s restrictions, it made them substantially more onerous in a way that was plainly designed to increase the pressure to maintain and create majority-minority districts or similar race-based districts. Congress overturned this Court s decisions in Ashcroft and Bossier II, see H.R. Rep. No , at (2006), and adopted the Justice Department s expansive interpretation of 5 that had been rejected in those cases. In so doing, it ensured that minority voters

31 26 current ability to elect their favored candidates would be preserved in amber until 2031, regardless of intervening demographic or other changes, and authorized the Department to use its discriminatory purpose power to again require race-based districting that subordinates traditional districting principles. Thus, in 2012, the Department will again be able to force Georgia to create a third majorityblack congressional district that ignores standard districting principles and to short-circuit any effort by the State to build upon its successful effort to depart from majority-minority districts in a manner that does not impede minority voters equal political opportunities. So increasing the pressure on covered jurisdictions to engage in race-based redistricting both (1) raises constitutional concerns sufficiently significant to render inapposite Katzenbach s endorsement of race-neutral efforts to eliminate discriminatory devices and (2) standing alone, shows that the new 5 cannot be congruent or proportional. Section 5 previously required denial of preclearance only if a change had the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote. 42 U.S.C. 1973c (2005). The new 5 works a fundamental shift by requiring denial of preclearance if a change in a covered jurisdiction s election law has the purpose of or will have the effect of diminishing the ability of any [minority group]... to elec their preferred candidates of choice. 42 U.S.C. 1973c(b) (emphases added). Thus, the relevant analysis... is a comparison between the minority community s ability to elect their genuinely preferred candidate of choice before and after a voting change.

32 27 H.R. Rep. No , at 71. This change transforms the law from one that promotes full voting access for all into a statute that blatantly mandates probable success for the preferred candidates of certain racial groups. It is quite clear that the newly amended 5 standard is a forbidden guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates, rather than an effort to ensure equality of opportunity. LULAC, 548 U.S. at 428. Under the new 5, certain select minority groups have a federal right to a certain level of electoral power equivalent to that extant today for the next three redistricting cycles (through 2031). This quota floor on the level of minority electoral success is, of course, necessarily a quota ceiling on nonminorities ability to elect. The draconian nature of this blunderbuss requirement is exacerbated by the fact that there is literally no defense or justification, no matter how compelling, that would authorize a jurisdiction to allow diminution of minorities electoral power. Even if demographic changes such as increased residential integration or migration of minorities from an urban core to the suburbs rendered a prior majority-minority district completely unfeasible absent wholesale abandonment of traditional districting principles, the State would nonetheless be required to create the district or its functional equivalent. The statute contains no escape clause for feasibility, and Congress consciously eliminated Ashcroft s feasibility inquiry. Surely Congress could not amend Title VII s effects test to eliminate the business necessity justification without running

33 28 afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, much less persuade anyone that this naked effects test could be imposed on State employers pursuant to Section 5 of that Amendment. Moreover, unlike 2, which requires only that political processes be equally open and forbids only providing minorities with less opportunity than other groups, 42 U.S.C. 1973(b) (emphases added), nothing in the new 5 s ability-to-elect requirement reflects any notion of racial equality. It is simply a straightforward command to never diminish minorities ability to elect, regardless of their current success level and regardless whether race-conscious voting by nonminorities played any role in diminishing their electoral fortunes. There can be little doubt that the new 5 locks in all existing majority-minority districts until 2031, even though those districts raise serious Fourteenth Amendment concerns and, at best, were viewed as a temporary device to facilitate the Nation s transformation to a race-blind electoral system. Since virtually every majority-minority district is so completely uncompetitive that general elections are a mere formality, see Franita Tolson, Increasing the Quantity and the Quality of the African-American Vote: Lessons for 2008 and Beyond, 10 Berkeley J. Afr.-Am. L. & Pol y 313, 336, (2008), it would be virtually impossible to transform such districts into coalition or similar districts where minorities have merely a probable or equal ability to elect their preferred candidates. Transforming an electoral lock into anything resembling a marginally competitive district will, by definition,

34 29 diminish the ability of minorities to elect their preferred candidates. Accordingly, for the next twenty-five years, minority voters will be immune from the obligation to pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground because they will reside in districts where they completely control the electoral outcomes. De Grandy, 512 U.S. at While that result undoubtedly served the naked political interests of the Republicans who controlled Congress in 2006 (because of the opportunities for Republican candidates in the overwhelmingly nonminority districts adjacent to majority-minority districts) and of minority congressional incumbents who, like all politicians, prefer safe districts, it certainly disserves the broad public interest in achieving a transformation to a society that is no longer fixated on race. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. at 490. Congress s extravagant condemnation of the Court s decision upholding a Georgia redistricting plan that was only the beginning of an effort to create, in Representative Lewis words, a truly interracial democracy, id., can only be viewed as expressing antipathy towards any system not grounded on the sordid business [of] divvying us up by race. LULAC, 548 U.S. at 511 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part). Indeed, in addition to effectively prohibiting the transformation of majority-minority districts into coalition or influence districts, the 2006 amendment further exacerbates racially preferential redistricting by also requiring the preservation of any such coalition districts. The plain language of the 2006